WASHINGTON — With the government shuttered and a deadline for raising the debt limit only two
weeks off, anxious Republicans began steering the party away from a dead-end debate about the
health-care law and toward discussion of a broader deal to reduce the nation’s debt.

In meetings with small groups of rank-and-file lawmakers, House Speaker John Boehner, R-West
Chester, has emphasized that he will not permit the country to default on its debt for the first
time.

Given that a bloc of hard-line conservatives is unlikely to vote to increase the debt limit
under any circumstances, Boehner has told fellow Republicans that they must craft an agreement that
can attract significant Democratic support.

“This needs to be a big bipartisan deal,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a close Boehner ally, said as
he emerged from a luncheon meeting in the speaker’s office yesterday. “This is much more about the
debt ceiling and a larger budget agreement than it is about Obamacare.”

One lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said yesterday that Boehner even has
suggested that he might be willing to risk the fury of conservatives by relying on a majority of
Democratic votes — and less than a majority of Republicans — to pass a debt-ceiling increase.

A senior aide denied that Boehner has suggested such a strategy.

Meanwhile, senior policy aides were at work on last-ditch alternatives that could win the
support of a majority of Republicans, such as increasing the $16.7 trillion debt limit for a short
period — mere days or weeks — to force Democrats to the negotiating table.

“Speaker Boehner has always said that the United States will not default on its debt, but if we’r
e going to raise the debt limit, we need to deal with the drivers of our debt and deficits,”
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said in a written statement.

The shift in strategy among Republicans caused a brief sensation yesterday, as political
analysts speculated that Boehner, who has long acknowledged the dangers of a default, might be
ready to give up the fight.

But Republicans pushed back hard against that idea. Although it might have been a mistake to
shut down the government in a quest to dismantle President Barack Obama’s health-care law, they
said, that does not mean they will roll over on the debt limit without concessions from
Democrats.

“I don’t think there’s energy in the Republican caucus to have any kind of default on the debt
limit,” said Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., a member of the House leadership who represents the
conservative class of 2010. But “we need a long-term plan to take future debt-ceiling increases off
the table.”

Increasing the debt limit for “a couple days, a week” would be a “horrible way” to jump-start
talks, Lankford said. “We’d rather just get it resolved.”

A very short-term increase in the debt limit could wreak havoc on the economy and financial
markets by dragging the debate well beyond Oct. 17, when the Treasury will exhaust its borrowing
authority and begin relying entirely on incoming revenue to pay the nation’s bills.

Yesterday, the Treasury Department released a report on debt ceiling “brinksmanship” that
examined the economic fallout from a similar impasse in 2011, when the nation came within days of
defaulting on its obligations.

The report found that consumer confidence plummeted in the months before the 2011 debt-limit
deadline. So did the stock market, robbing the nation of $2.4 trillion in household wealth,
including

$800 billion in retirement assets. Interest rates also spiked, raising borrowing costs for
homebuyers, businesses and consumers, with the effects lingering long after the crisis was
resolved.

“Playing games” with the debt limit by approving a short-term increase “would be a very, very
serious mistake,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

So far, however, Obama and Senate Democrats have refused to negotiate with Republicans, either
over the debt limit or a plan to fund the government into fiscal 2014, which began on Tuesday.
Congress hit an impasse after Republicans insisted that any funding plan include provisions to
dismantle the health-care law, which began enrollments on Tuesday.

Also yesterday, Obama canceled the remaining portion of his scheduled trip to Asia for economic
summits.